The autumn leaves are falling like rain. Although my neighbors are all barbarians and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups at my table.

T’ang Dynasty poem

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

~ Wu-men ~

Sunday, February 03, 2013

Look! Purple Turkeys!

An article caught my eye. An excerpt is below. The whole thing may be read here.

If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This

by Peter Bregman | 10:00 AM October 12, 2012

This morning, like every morning, I sat cross-legged on a cushion
on the floor, rested my hands on my knees, closed my eyes, and did
nothing but breathe for 20 minutes.

People say the hardest part about meditating is finding the time to
meditate. This makes sense: who these days has time to do nothing? It's
hard to justify.

Meditation brings many benefits: It refreshes us, helps us settle
into what's happening now, makes us wiser and gentler, helps us cope in a
world that overloads us with information and communication, and more.
But if you're still looking for a business case to justify spending time
meditating, try this one: Meditation makes you more productive.

How? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges.

Research shows
that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships,
increase your dependability, and raise your performance. If you can
resist your urges, you can make better, more thoughtful decisions. You
can be more intentional about what you say and how you say it. You can
think about the outcome of your actions before following through on
them.

Our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a
new behavior or changing an old habit. It's probably the single most
important skill for our growth and development.

As it turns out, that's one of the things meditation teaches us. It's also one of the hardest to learn.

When I sat down to meditate this morning, relaxing a little more with
each out-breath, I was successful in letting all my concerns drift
away. My mind was truly empty of everything that had concerned it before
I sat. Everything except the flow of my breath. My body felt blissful
and I was at peace.

For about four seconds.

Within a breath or two of emptying my mind, thoughts came flooding in
— nature abhors a vacuum.

I felt an itch on my face and wanted to
scratch it. A great title for my next book popped into my head and I
wanted to write it down before I forgot it. I thought of at least four
phone calls I wanted to make and one difficult conversation I was going
to have later that day. I became anxious, knowing I only had a few hours
of writing time. What was I doing just sitting here? I wanted to open
my eyes and look at how much time was left on my countdown timer. I
heard my kids fighting in the other room and wanted to intervene.

Here's the key though: I wanted to do all those things, but I didn't do them. Instead, every time I had one of those thoughts, I brought my attention back to my breath.

Sometimes, not following through on something you want to do is a
problem, like not writing that proposal you've been procrastinating on
or not having that difficult conversation you've been avoiding.

But other times, the problem is that you do follow through on
something you don't want to do. Like speaking instead of listening or
playing politics instead of rising above them.

Meditation teaches us to resist the urge of that counterproductive follow through.

For example, when an employee makes a mistake and you want to yell at
him even though you know that it's better — for him and for the morale
of the group — to ask some questions and discuss it gently and
rationally. Or when you want to blurt something out in a meeting but
know you'd be better off listening. Or when you want to buy or sell a
stock based on your emotions when the fundamentals and your research
suggest a different action. Or when you want to check email every three
minutes instead of focusing on the task at hand.

4 comments:

In the Alexander training, this capacity is called "inhibition," which is not a happy word in today's culture, but nonetheless describes what's necessary if one wants to focus. As in meditation, it's a tricky business.

I once read a description of standing meditation and in the instructions it said, "And don't fidget." I thought ha-ha, pretty funny; little did I know.

My own sitting practice is flippin' lousy, experientially -- but I do it anyway. Although ... now and then a certain *stillness* arises around me that I've come to appreciate.

I was told that distillation of alcohol up to 70% is easy, up to 90% demand much more effort, 90%+ is difficult, approaching 100 is extremely difficult, one approaches it as a limit, and never gets it. But the beauty and the challenge of the game is when one approaches 100, it demands great concentration and effort. BUT it is never pure Nothingness.

It is the same with meditation.

PS: With pure Nothingness, one doesn't even get 70%. It is called lethargy.